The Human Rights Campaign, the largest and most establishment-friendly of America's gay rights advocacy groups, has released a YouTube spot unveiling a newly public supporter of same-sex marriage. "I'm Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs," the man says with his unmistakably Brooklynese accent, "and I support marriage equality." In line with the HRC's policy of homosexual self-erasure, Blankfein never utters the words "gay" or "same-sex". Nor do they appear anywhere in the ad's captions. At least someone told him to wear a pink tie.

Well, you take the friends you can get in this world. The CEO of Goldman is not exactly the most popular figure in American public life, but there's a kind of logic to Blankfein's advocacy. Last year, HRC produced several ads targeting specific constituencies that lag in support of same-sex marriage. Barbara Bush (the former president's daughter, not mother) appeared in a spot targeting Republicans, while the actor Mo'Nique and the Newark mayor Cory Booker made videos aimed at African Americans.

Blankfein, who is billed as HRC's first "corporate spokesman for same-sex marriage", has his own constituency to address: not multimillionaires awarded spectacular pay for socially unproductive capitalist enterprise, presumably, but the so-called business community, where some people might actually look up to him.

Banks can be conservative places, sure, but as the establishment goes, there are worse fields for gay people. Two decades ago, the big banks were riddled with closet cases – men who were as unable to ingratiate themselves to the old boys' club as Jews were in previous generations, and women who couldn't get into the inner circle regardless of their sexual orientation. The Street was so inhospitable that at one brokerage firm, co-owned by two closeted men, each didn't know that the other was gay. These days, Goldman and its rivals heavily recruit gay and lesbian applicants, and in New York and London, there are even interbank mixers where young male traders with a taste for the same can drink together. (I've crashed a couple of these parties; they're a bit dry.)

Compared to other elite fields, such as politics and especially law, finance has adapted in ways we shouldn't underestimate. So it's not really so surprising that the CEO of Goldman, which had already endorsed the eternally stalled Employment Non-Discrimination Act, has gone to bat for the gays. (And it's not inconceivable that Blankfein, like his predecessors Jon Corzine and Hank Paulson, may have agreed to make the ad in preparation for a role in political life.)

What is surprising – surprising and also tone-deaf – is the perception that Blankfein has somehow taken a risky stand. I don't doubt that his support is sincere, but to call it brave misunderstands both the state of gay politics and Blankfein's entire reason for being.

Traders use the phrase "priced in" to describe how markets account for the likelihood of future events when determining an asset's current value – and the legalization of same-sex marriage has surely been priced in to Blankfein's calculus. Supporting gay marriage, for the CEO of Goldman, is not only so wholly unthreatening to his bottom line that he risks nothing by endorsing it. More than that: gay marriage in the United States, from the bank's view, is probably a fait accompli. Our relationships and their legal status have become a PR no-brainer, a cause so devoid of risk that a CEO facing unprecedented populist backlash can support them as much as your favorite Occupier.

As Karl Rove taught us in 2004, same-sex marriage is an uncommonly useful tool to distract citizens from questions of economic justice or political responsibility. Eight years later, the public view of equal rights for gays and lesbians has shifted. But the use value of marriage in the political sphere remains: it shifts the focus of political discourse away from tougher, more fundamental questions of economics and power. And in this moment of anti-elitist consolidation, that is just as the lords of finance would like.

Gays should muster as many supporters as we can, of course. But gay equality is not the only kind of equality we should care about – and as this naked PR layup should remind us, the battle for economic fairness is going to be a much greater struggle.

But I don't mean to sound ungrateful. If you're reading this, Lloyd: come down to the Stonewall and I'll buy you a drink, even though I know you can afford it.